And, faced with a media pack trying to eke an unguarded view on Manchester City's defensive shortcomings, or their confetti of red cards, or tenuous links with Alexis Sanchez, he was cool and collected.

Pep Guardiola's terse answers to the prickly questions will, no doubt, be seen by some as a sign of pressure.

It all adds up to a fractious, uneasy feeling around the Blues camp as they prepare for the pointless exercise of playing Celtic in a rubber that is not so much dead as cremated, buried and forgotten.

But Guardiola painted a picture of progress, of a transition that is moving onwards relatively smoothy, with the odd bumpy patch, like the last half-hour against Chelsea.

He admitted, in a typically contrary way, that winning ugly at Burnley and Crystal Palace had shaken his faith in his team. City earned six points from those two games but did not play in the way he wanted.

That faith, bizarrely, was restored in defeat by Chelsea, when he was happy with the first hour, and remains untroubled by what happened in that final 30 minutes.

One questioner asked him about the chaotic ending to the game, when Sergio Aguero's wild challenge on David Luiz brought him a red card and four-match ban, and sparked a melee that also saw Fernandinho sent off, and two Chelsea players booked.

What was to blame for that, the questioner asked, allowing the manager to blame frustration, or anger at the referee's previous decisions, or maybe Brexit.

“The players” was Guardiola's answer, his eyes flashing a warning that no more would be forthcoming.

When pressed on the matter, he injected a little Catalan sarcasm, wondering what else should take the blame: “The fans? You? Me?”

Guardiola gets irritated at a media obsession with negatives – when asked about City's six red cards, he made that point: “We are the best team with ball possession and with six red cards” was his pointed answer to his crumbly disciplinary record at City.

And after that light glove-work with the English media, he saved his heavier blows for a couple of his old sparring partners from the Spanish press.

One asked him about reports in Chile saying he had contacted Arsenal's Alexis Sanchez about a possible transfer.